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TRANSCRIPT
Benefits and difficulties in using peer response for writing in the EFL classroom
Sofia Hansson
Ämneslärarprogrammet
Examensarbete:
Kurs:
Nivå:
Termin/år:
Handledare:
Examinator:
15 hp
LGEN1G
Grundnivå
HT2014
Pia Köhlmyr
Miguel Garcia-Yeste
HT14-1160-005-LGEN1GKod:
Key words: Peer response, writing, EFL classroom, benefits, difficulties
Abstract
Peer response has been in the interest of teachers and researchers for a long time, and there is a
substantial amount of research on the topic. Therefore, this paper strives to explore and summarize
the benefits and difficulties in using peer response for writing in the EFL-classroom by reviewing
articles and books on the area. Suggestions on how one can work with possible difficulties will
also be examined. Scientific results will be presented as well as opinions of both teachers and
students, as these are just as important when it comes to using peer response in the classroom. In
order for this kind of concept to be beneficial, both students and teachers must be comfortable and
have faith in the mode of procedure used, as one of the difficulties presented is students doubting
the efficiency and helpfulness of peer response. Finally, a few suggestions for further research will
be presented.
Contents
Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 1
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
2 Aspects of using peer response .............................................................................................. 2
2.1 Benefits of using peer response ...................................................................................... 2
2.2 Difficulties involved with using peer response .............................................................. 7
2.3 Possible solutions for fighting difficulties .................................................................... 11
3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 13
Reference list ................................................................................................................................ 15
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1 Introduction
The main focus of this report is peer assessment, which is a branch of formative assessment.
In this paper the term peer response will be used for what is also commonly referred to as
peer feedback, peer review or peer evaluation. Formative assessment is based on the process
of learning and focuses on progress, rather than results, which is the focus of summative
assessment (Hedge, 2000). Formative assessment can be performed by oneself, a teacher, or a
peer, and in this case it is the feedback from peers that is in focus. Furthermore, it is peer
response on writing that will be investigated in this paper.
However, it is not peer response in any context, it is peer response in classes where
English as a foreign language is taught (EFL). In this report, English as a foreign language
refers to English in a country where English is not an official language. That is, English is not
needed in order for these students to get by in the country where they live. With that said, it
needs to be mentioned that some of the articles reviewed in this paper are not about EFL
learners. A few studies have been made on native speakers of English, and a few on ESL
learners (English as a second language). All that is written on these two groups of learners
may not be directly applicable to EFL learners, due to the differences in for example language
proficiency, but it can still be relevant to the development of research on the EFL classroom.
Furthermore, several of the studies used in this literature review were conducted in Asian
countries, and this needs to be taken into consideration when looking at the results. Due to
cultural differences between for example China and Sweden all results may not be applicable
to Swedish students, since these two groups of students might respond differently to peer
response. In addition to this, the groups of students in the studies used are in several cases
university students, which also is a factor to take into consideration. Given the different
maturity levels of university students and high school students for example, there is a chance
that this would have an impact on the results and that the results may not be fully applicable
to all ages.
A substantial amount of research has been made on peer response during the last three
decades, showing its growing importance in schools world wide. It is by many considered to
have positive effects on students’ learning, and in this case, writing (see, for example
Lundstrom & Baker, 2009; Zhao, 2014; Min, 2005). The wanted and perceived benefits of
using peer response include that students get a more developed sense of self-regulation,
audience awareness as well as the possibility of using it as a tool to increase the students’
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awareness of their own learning. In spite of the positive attitude towards the usage of peer
response, there are studies that show that there are in fact quite a few difficulties that need to
be overcome if peer response is to work in the classroom. One of the biggest concerns among
students is that their peers are not proficient enough to provide feedback (Hu, 2005;
Rollinson, 2005; Tsui & Ng, 2000). Furthermore, friendship bias is a problem found in
several studies (Cheng & Warren, 2005; Harris & Brown, 2013; Tang & Tithecott, 1999).
Peer response is considered important by Swedish school authorities, but the question is
how much it is used, how it is used, and if it is used in the most efficient ways. In English
classrooms it should be used to fulfil one of the criteria in the curriculum for English. This
criterion, which needs to be included in every course of English in all Swedish upper
secondary schools, states that students should be able to work with both their own and others’
texts and oral performances in order to improve and adjust to the purpose of their assignments
(Skolverket, 2011). Furthermore, peer response is included in the assessment support for
Swedish schools (Skolverket, 2011), where it is claimed to help students understand the
assessment criteria as well as it gives them a chance to see different ways of solving a task.
Since peer response is included in the Swedish curriculum for English and needs to be present
in every English classroom, more needs to be known about peer assessment and its benefits
and difficulties, and how to work with the latter.
2 Aspects of using peer response
2.1 Benefits of using peer response
The aspects to consider when wanting to use peer response are many, and teachers might
sometimes ask if it really is beneficial and worth the time. A few possible answers to these
questions will be presented and discussed in this section.
The benefits of giving feedback have been examined in a study conducted by Lundstrom
and Baker (2009), where two groups of students were given two different tasks depending on
which group they belonged to. One of the groups was assigned to give peer response and the
other one was assigned to receive peer response. Both of the groups were given the same
essay which was written by a student of their proficiency level. The group that received
feedback was to revise the essay (with help of comments in the margins), and the group that
gave feedback was to provide suggestions on how the essay could be improved (with the
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comments in the margins removed). However, the students were never given the opportunity
to give feedback on essays that their peers had written, nor did they receive feedback on their
own writing. This was done so that the researchers could “control for differences in students
writing” (p. 33). The results of the study showed that the students who got the opportunity to
give peer response improved their writing more between the pre- and post-test than did the
students who only got to use feedback to revise. The students who improved the most were
beginners, and they improved in overall and global writing aspects, which include
organization, development and cohesion. Hence it follows that giving peer response was
beneficial.
Zhao (2014) reports on benefits of peer response detected in interviews with Chinese
university students. Firstly, students claimed to learn while reading their peers’ writing
because they sometimes included ways of thinking and structuring that were new to the
reader. Furthermore, if the texts contained errors, the students could also learn from that
because they made the same errors themselves. Secondly, students reported that because of
the similarities in their proficiency level and background, they could understand the writing of
each other better than their tutor sometimes could. Thirdly, students felt more comfortable
when discussing feedback with their peers than when they discussed it with their tutors, which
led to deeper discussions and coverage of more areas with potential for improvement.
Similarly, Min (2005) found that students from a university in Taiwan reported on the
benefits of making suggestions for improvement while giving peer response. They suggested
that in order to be able to give good suggestions they needed to look up new words. These
words were then later integrated in the students’ vocabulary. In addition, the students claimed
to have gained more awareness of their own writing and difficulties, and started to look for
solutions for themselves in the same way as they looked for solutions for their peers when
giving peer response.
Hu (2005) conducted a study on his students over the course of three years in order to
develop an effective practice for peer response. At the end of the research period, when he
had found a way of working that both he and the students were happy with, several benefits of
peer response were suggested. The students claimed, as is also mentioned above, that they
learned much about writing just by reading what their peers had written, as well as they
learned by providing peer response. Moreover, they believed that their peers had good
suggestions for improving texts they had written. Motivation was also a factor, as the peer
response made it possible for more people than the teacher to read the writing of the students.
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This also contributed to making the students more aware of the audience when they were
writing, possibly making the assignments feel more real and less of just a text for school.
In agreement with Hu’s findings, Villamil and de Guerrero (1998) conducted a study
regarding the impact of peer response on writing. They found that receiving comments from
their peers had a great effect on the students, who incorporated much of the feedback that they
were given. Furthermore, Villamil and de Guerrero suggested that the peer response used may
have lead to a degree of self-regulation. That is, the students were influenced to take more
responsibility for their texts through the act of giving and receiving feedback from their peers,
as well as they became more aware of their texts and what could be done to change them.
Moreover, the students’ awareness of their audience increased when they were writing, as
they now had to write so that their peers would be able to understand them, and not only their
teacher. In similarity to this, Rollison (2005) suggested that writers need an audience, and the
best audience there is is one that can give response immediately, so that the writer can change
potentially confusing or difficult aspects of the text.
In her book on the use of peer response groups, Løkensgard Hoel (2001) pointed out that
students benefit from peer response because of the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky,
as cited in Løkensgard Hoel, 2001). By working together, students will learn from each other
and teach each other new concepts and perspectives. This can happen both when working
with written interaction and when reading other students’ texts. This way, students can
borrow parts from each other’s texts, come up with solutions of how to make peers’ texts
better and also improve their own writing. Moreover, Løkensgard Hoel claimed that using
peer response contributes to making the students more aware of their own learning (2001, p.
239). In order for peer response to work, the students continuously need to think about how it
works and when it does not work. When faced with these questions, students need to think
about how they learn and when they learn, and also how peer response works for them and in
what form.
A study on the use of peer response training and its effects was conducted on students at a
Canadian community college (Rothschild & Klingenberg, 1990). This study showed that
students who had been trained in using peer response with the help of a certain scale
developed more positive attitudes towards writing than did the control group which was not
trained. The experimental group did for example view their grammar and vocabulary as
having improved to a further extent than did the control group. Furthermore, the students in
the experimental group claimed to have more ideas for writing after going through the
training and they also believed to be better at organizing their texts afterwards. The same
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questionnaire was given to a different class later, which had gone through the same training,
and similar to Hu’s claims (2005) they perceived peer response as being helpful when it came
to giving feedback and reading each other’s texts. However, they did not feel that receiving
feedback was equally helpful. Even though the results of the study by Rothschild and
Klingenberg (1990) showed positive effects after training, this might in some respects be
obvious. We do not know if the control group had any chance at all to work with feedback,
but if they did not, it is only natural that a group working closely and thoroughly with their
writing through feedback should perceive their improvement more substantial.
Tang and Tithecott (1999) investigated the effects of using oral peer response in peer
response groups and found several benefits. Firstly, the students claimed that reading their
essays out loud to their response groups helped them detect errors in their writing, that is, they
became more aware of their texts. Secondly, the students actually used the feedback their
peers provided them with when they revised their essays. However, the revisions did not
always improve their texts and the suggestions were not always appropriate. In spite of this,
there was a benefit to the usage of feedback even of the faulty kind, which was that the
students developed a sense of having an audience. Thirdly, Tang and Tithecott found that
“students provided scaffolding in peer response sessions” (1999, p. 33). The term scaffolding
is used to describe that students (or teachers) provide support for a student through for
example clarifying questions or explanations. The most common strategies for scaffolding
used by the students in this study were instructing, announcing, restating, requesting
clarification, clarifying and eliciting. Last but not least, students also reported to have gained
self-confidence by working in the response groups. One question that should be brought up
regarding the process of the peer response is why the author of the text was not allowed to
discuss with the peers providing feedback. The author was only allowed to listen and take
notes, not to defend their work or argue their case. It is doubtful that this is the most beneficial
way in which to carry out peer response orally, since the students will have no way of
discussing their work or understanding somebody else’s viewpoint completely. It was
however efficient as proven by the study, but there might be ways of improving it.
A study carried out by Tsui and Ng (2000) in a secondary school in China, showed
several benefits for using peer response when writing. Similar to previously mentioned
studies, consciousness of having an audience was reported by the students. One of them
explained that when the teacher is the only person reading the text that he has produced, he
does not have to try so hard to make the teacher understand. However, when he was aware
that his peers were going to read what he had written, he wanted to make sure that they would
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understand what his intentions with the text were. Another benefit that was pointed out is that
students developed “a sense of ownership of text” (p. 162).They did not feel obligated to use
all the comments they received, they rather discussed them with their peers and after that
decided if they wanted to use them in their revisions. Furthermore, students claimed that it
was helpful to work with peer response because they had a chance to help each other. They
recognized that they had different areas of knowledge and that they could fill the gap for other
students as well that they could be helped to fill theirs. In addition, it was not only receiving
comments from peers that helped in revising texts, it was also the act of giving feedback. By
spotting weaknesses in their peers’ writing the students became more aware of their own
writing, hence they could improve it even without much input from peers or their teacher.
A study comparing the effects of using peer response and self-assessment by Mawlawi
Diad (2010) showed that the students in the group that used peer response managed to correct
more errors than did the students in the group that used self-assessment. Both groups had the
same training on editing essays before starting to look at their own and each other’s essays.
The errors in focus were subject/verb agreement, pronoun agreement, wrong word choice and
awkward sentence structure errors. Even though this study was very specific in which errors
students were supposed to look for, while not looking at the effectiveness of peer response
compared to teacher feedback, it has value in this literature review. The study shows the
meaningfulness of letting students work together and to read each other’s writing. That kind
of activity also allows students to discuss with each other, which in turn can lead to more
learning than had been achieved if they only received feedback from themselves or from a
teacher.
In a study carried out at a Taiwanese university by Lin and Chien (2009), sixteen students
went through training for peer response, wrote an essay, and thereafter used peer response to
give feedback on each other’s essays. At the end of the study, seven of the participants filled
in a survey sheet with questions regarding their attitudes towards using peer response. The
result showed that a majority of the students preferred receiving feedback from their peers, as
opposed to receiving feedback from their teachers. Furthermore, the students also claimed that
they felt their peers’ feedback easier to read than that of their teacher, due to the fact that they
felt more relaxed with their peers. Students also suggested that they enjoyed peer response
because that gave them insight in the proficiency of their peers, which made them feel more
comfortable. Lastly, motivation and inspiration were factors that increased through the use of
peer response, and five of the seven participants answering the survey wanted peer response
to be used in their class again. Even though this study showed positive results and pointed out
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many benefits of the usage of peer response for writing, there are a couple of elements that
should be commented on. Firstly, only sixteen students participated in the study, which makes
it rather small. Nevertheless, it can still hold valuable information. Secondly, looking at the
questionnaire, mainly leading questions can be found, not giving any space to express
opinions outside of the questions or to explain why a certain stance was taken. If that had
been possible maybe more details on the usefulness of peer response could have been
discovered as well as difficulties. However, the students did fill in that they agreed or strongly
agreed where they could have put “not agree” if that would have been the case, which is why
the results still can be seen as accurate.
Bryant and Carless (2010) suggested after having done research on peer response in
China, which is a very test-dominated setting, that using peer response may help students
prepare for examinations. Instead of having to use strategies such as memorization, students
could learn what kind of errors they usually make through the use of peer response. When this
has been done, the students can more easily be prepared for what kind of mistakes they will
possibly make, and they will in turn be more aware of these and maybe be able to spot more
of them in a test situation.
2.2 Difficulties involved with using peer response
A quite substantial number of studies have been made on peer response and its different
benefits, as shown above. However, there are also difficulties that one can encounter when
working with peer response.
In a study made by Harris and Brown (2013), three teachers from New Zealand and their
students answered questions about the usage and implementation of peer response in their
classrooms. The researchers also visited the classrooms one week in each class to video
record the usage of peer response. At the end of the study especially two things had turned out
to be difficult when working with peer response. Firstly, students had a tendency to value
teacher response higher than peer response. Secondly, students were sometimes worried that
their comments would upset their peers, which led to friendship bias. Harris and Brown also
noted that in addition to valuing teacher response higher than peer response, they did not trust
their own ability to make accurate judgements.
Friendship bias was also found by Cheng and Warren (2005) in a study made on 51
Chinese undergraduate students, about peers’ feedback on language proficiency. In interviews
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four of them stated that it was difficult to give close friends entirely fair marks due to the fact
that they did not want to hurt their friends. Similar student opinions were found by Tang and
Tithecott (1999). In addition to this, the students in the study judged that they were not
qualified to give peer response to their peers because they lacked knowledge of the English
language that they felt they needed to complete such a task.
In contrast to the findings by Harris and Brown, and Cheng and Warren, Azarnoosh (2013)
found no friendship bias in her study. The students in her study provided a list of their closest
friends in the class, and the peer responses were later analysed. That is, did it make a
difference when students gave feedback to their closest friends and when they provided
feedback for the rest of the class? The results indicated that it did not make a difference who
the students gave feedback to. Azarnoosh explained this with the fact that the students had
been in the same class for at least two years, hence, they all knew each other relatively well
and were all friends. This might have led to unconscious bias, which means that the students
did not mean to be lenient when giving feedback on each other’s texts, but since they were all
friends it is possible that the they unconsciously did not comment on certain errors for
example. One must be aware of the differences in how these two studies were carried out,
however. In the first study it was the students’ opinions which were measured and in the
second one it was results. Both seem to be valid, and it seems important to take into
consideration that we do not know the opinions of the students in the second study.
Another type of bias was shown in a study on Japanese university students who gave
feedback on anonymous papers (Matsuno, 2008). In comparison to the other studies where
students knew who they gave feedback to, this one used anonymous papers. The students who
gave peer response showed bias towards the low-achieving students, being stricter when they
gave feedback to high-achieving student. In this study an evaluation form was given to the
students and they filled this in for each essay they responded to, rating for vocabulary,
content, organisation, sentence structure and grammar. Taking this into account, we do not
know what the results would have been if they had given feedback in the form of comments.
Maybe the students providing the feedback would still have been stricter with high-achieving
peers or maybe it would not have been as apparent as it was now when they had to put a
number on every aspect.
An addition to previous points made is that students sometimes prefer teacher response so
much that they will not be willing to use the feedback that they get from peers (Hu & Lam,
2009). Even though Hu and Lam state that the results were statistically insignificant, it is an
interesting fact to look at. The students who were negative towards their peers’ ability to
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provide feedback were not as prone to use the feedback they got as the students who did not
feel negatively about it.
Students’ concerns are a major issue when using peer response, and they should be taken
seriously. Harris and Brown (2013) found that students were sometimes afraid to disappoint
their teacher when using self-assessment, believing that they had a certain rank in the class
which would be lowered if they did badly. This led to them not being able to focus on the task
and that they did not use self-assessment in order to learn, but rather to show their teacher that
they understood something. These findings regarded self-assessment, which is different to
peer response in that when it comes to self-assessment it is the students giving feedback to
themselves without anyone else being involved, in contrast to peer response where there are
other students providing the feedback. Even though these two are rather different in their
approaches, they are similar in the way that in both cases there are students providing the
feedback instead of the teacher. Due to this, the results may be applicable to the use of peer
response as well, since teachers in many cases read the comments that their students make on
others’ work. The same claim was made by Nilson (2010) who suggested that many students
see the teacher as their only audience, hence this is an important person to keep happy. This
leads to the students feeling that it is more important that their teacher is happy with them
than that they actually learn something from the task they are performing.
Similar to Harris and Brown, Hu (2005) found that his students involved in a course of
English academic writing did not trust their peers to make valid comments. Even if they
would succeed in that task, the students had a fear of not being able to distinguish between
useful and not useful comments from their peers, and would therefore not use them in their
revisions. Along the same lines, Rollinson (2005) suggested that students sometimes feel that
only a writer better than themselves could possibly assess their own writing, making peer
response difficult to implement as students in the same class often are more or less on the
same level of language proficiency. Tsui and Ng (2000) found similar concerns of the
students in their study, claiming that they could not trust their peers. This led to the students
not being willing to even take their peers’ comments into consideration because they claimed
to already know that they were of no use.
Løkensgard Hoel (2001, p.21) found yet another difficulty, which concerns time. She
suggested that peer response is, at least in its initial stage, very time consuming. This might
scare teachers off from using it. In addition to this, the starting process of peer response can
also be demanding for the students since they are not used to the kind of responsibility peer
response demands. Løkensgard Hoel concluded that this might result in chaos if the teacher is
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not properly prepared. Another objection against the usage of peer response is that the
students are not able to give feedback that is substantial enough, and end up giving comments
that do not help the writer to improve their text. This has to do with the fact that the students
are not familiar with the criteria used to assess texts. The same results were concluded by Min
(2005) who reported that the comments from the participants in the study were often not
substantial enough and did only include one step, for example pointing out the problem.
However, just pointing out a problem might not always be enough for the person receiving the
feedback. There needs to exist understanding on why it is a problem as well as how to solve
it.
In agreement with Løkensgard Hoel, Bryant and Carless (2010) in their study on 34
Chinese primary school students found that the students perceived the teacher’s comments as
more valid and useful than the comments of their peers. The latter often not involving any
kind of criticism, but mostly praise. They also showed concerns about making their
classmates upset if they were to write a comment with criticism in it. Furthermore, the results
showed that students of lower English proficiency felt uncomfortable giving feedback to peers
with a higher English proficiency, and instead of trying to give peer response would just
assume that no errors were made by their peer. The peer with higher English proficiency in
turn felt that the peer with lower English proficiency could not use the feedback provided.
The students in this study were given, and gave, feedback to the same peer all year because of
a seating arrangement made by their homeroom teacher. The theory on the zone of proximal
development, building on the belief that students with help from peers or teachers can reach a
level of proficiency that they cannot reach on their own (Vygotsky, as cited in Løkensgard
Hoel, 2001, p.87), suggests that it would be beneficial for a less proficient and a more
proficient peer to work together. However, Løkensgard Hoel claimed that one should avoid
having two such different proficiency levels in the same group (2001, p. 105).
In his study on stress related to different forms of assessment at an Australian university,
Nigel (2010) found that peer assessment, more so than assessment by a tutor, induces stress in
the students. Nigel explains this as the students wanting to perform better because they would
get peer response from their classmates, and concludes that better performance and stress
correlate. In the study, four groups participated, one which received feedback from a tutor
only, and three groups who received additional feedback from either themselves (self
assessment) or their peers. What is not mentioned however, is if these students had ever
worked with peer response before the time of the study. If they had not encountered this way
of working before, maybe the stress could have come from not being certain what one should
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do or how to behave in the situation, rather than stress induced by the fact that their peers
would read their texts. It also needs to be mentioned that this study was conducted in a
research methods class and not in an English class. It still had to do with the act of writing
texts and giving feedback however, and is therefore relevant to this literature review.
2.3 Possible solutions for fighting difficulties
As have been seen so far in this literature review, there are both many benefits to using peer
response in the writing classroom as well as difficulties. To make sure that students are able
to benefit as is described and to counteract the difficulties, one needs to know how that is
done in the best way. This section will treat possible solutions for fighting the hardships of
peer response and also suggestions on how to use peer response in the classroom.
First and foremost, many researchers seem to agree that training before starting the peer
response process is important to help students develop into confident peer response givers and
receivers (Rollinson, 2005; Min, 2005; Cheng & Warren, 2005; Hu, 2005; Zhao, 2014;
Topping, 2009; Saito, 2008). One way of going through this kind of training is described in
Zhao’s study on 18 university students in China (2014). By reading students’ writing and
explaining to the students where something could be improved and in what way, the teacher
made their own response process available to the students. Min (2005) used a similar
approach where the students had the chance to look at essays written by former students and
learn how their teacher would comment in relation to the system for commenting that was
used in this study. It may be advisable to let the students start commenting on texts that have
not been written by their peers, since this may help them remain objective in the task and not
fall for friendship bias. Furthermore, Min (2005) reported that students had a new approach to
writing comments and using peer response after the training session. One suggestion that
seems especially valuable is to make students understand that they are not to comment on
their peers’ texts as teachers, but as readers. When they understood this, they started to be
more empathetic when giving feedback, which in turn led to them providing feedback which
was more helpful for their peers.
Secondly, as mentioned in the section on difficulties, many students are concerned about
the effect comments will have on their peers and they do not dare to write comments that can
be seen as negative and will therefore use praise instead. To counter this and to create an
environment where it is okay for students to discuss their work and to share content with each
other, Hansen and Liu (2005) suggested that teachers help to create a comfortable
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environment for the students. To achieve this they suggested that the teacher can initiate
icebreaker activities, as well as letting the students work together in groups often. This way,
the teacher can be made aware of possible difficulties in the group and may be able to work
with them and prevent them from happening when engaging students in peer response.
Thirdly, a concern that was expressed by the students was that they did not feel proficient
enough to give feedback to their peers, and also that they were not aware of the criteria used
for writing. One way of solving this is to let students design their own peer response sheets
and come up with their own criteria (Hansen & Liu, 2005). Similarly, Topping (2009)
suggested that the students should be involved in the development of criteria, as well as a part
of helping to clarify the criteria and explaining what they mean. He suggested that this might
be a way of making the students feel less anxious about the task at hand, that is, peer
response. Although seemingly efficient, some critique has been pointed towards the use of
peer response sheets. A study made by Hyland (2000) conducted on two university classes
with two different teachers in New Zealand, showed that the group using peer response sheets
more often had a more negative attitude towards the end of the study than did the group that
did not use peer response sheets more than on one occasion. Hyland claimed that the negative
effect of using peer response sheets lies in the fact that they can take away students’
spontaneous reactions to a text. A peer response sheet might also be considered by the
students to be “just another work sheet to fill in” (p. 51), which would in turn counteract the
feelings of motivation that peer response sometimes can bring. Furthermore, Hall (2009)
suggested that sometimes students are so involved with filling in peer response sheets that
they do not have time or energy to engage in the actual peer response. In conclusion, peer
response sheets can be very useful and helpful to guide students when giving feedback, but
they can also interrupt the spontaneity of giving feedback. The solution is not to altogether
abandon peer response sheets as they can provide great support for the students, but every
class and student are different, therefore, every teacher should decide for themselves what
kind of peer response sheet should be used, if any, and how it should be designed.
Finally, Hansen and Liu (2005) suggested a few approaches to make peer response easier
for the students. The teacher should instruct the students on how to ask meaningful questions
and what those kinds of questions might be. This procedure can help students start a
discussion and will bring them to more meaningful conversations. Furthermore, students may
need support on how to express one’s opinions in a way that no one gets hurt and in a way
that will help the person receiving the feedback.
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3 Conclusion
Many studies have found both difficulties and benefits, proving that peer response is not
altogether unproblematic. It may be suggested however, due to the many benefits of this
approach, that it is worth taking the risk. The benefits found are that students learn through
reading each other’s texts as well as they learn through the errors of others. By detecting
errors in someone else’s text, students can become aware of their own errors as well. In
addition, it has been shown that students feel more comfortable working with each other than
with a tutor or a teacher and that students can gain self-confidence through working in
response groups. Self-regulation is also to be found among the benefits for peer response, and
it is suggested that students can become more aware of their own learning as well as become
aware of the fact that every text has an audience.
Counteracting the benefits are the difficulties that can be encountered, the most
substantial ones being that students value feedback provided by a teacher higher than that of a
peer and that they do not trust their own or their peers’ ability to give peer response. This
leads to the students not wanting to use the comments their peers give them. Furthermore,
friendship bias has been detected in studies on peer response, which may lead to students only
giving praise to each other, something that is not very valuable when it comes to helpful
feedback. Lastly, starting to use peer response might be time consuming, and the students
might have difficulties providing feedback because they feel unfamiliar with the criteria used
to assess writing.
Despite the many possible difficulties, there are many suggestions that might help. Firstly,
researchers have suggested that training to use peer response is important for it to work, as
students will become used to the way of working and become more confident in the process.
Secondly, it is suggested that students can be a part of creating peer response sheets and
grading rubric, this way they will be aware of what criteria are being used, which will help
them both in their own writing process as well as when they provide peer response. Apart
from making students aware and comfortable with the process, it is important that they are
comfortable with each other. A comfortable learning environment where all students are okay
with working with each other should be achieved before working with peer response. Seeing
to the benefits and the difficulties, it seems like peer response is a good idea to use when
teaching writing in the English classroom. Despite the many difficulties, those are problems
14
that can be solved, and once that has been achieved, there are only the benefits left to work
for.
To conclude, a few suggestions for future research will be presented. There is already a
great amount of research concerning peer response and the implications that exist for using it.
However, it would be interesting to see more on how peer response is actually used and what
students and teachers think of it. Furthermore, it would be rewarding to see research from a
European context, preferably Sweden, since much of the research made on peer response is
carried out in Asia and North America. Moreover, as mentioned in the introduction, peer
response is a part of the Swedish curriculum for English and it would therefore be especially
interesting to see how much it is used in Swedish high schools, how it is used and why. Two
questions that could be looked into are: What are the motives behind using peer response and
how has it worked? Is it used solely because it is mentioned in the curriculum for example, or
is it used to benefit students in the best way possible? In conclusion, much has been learnt
about peer response and its dynamics already, but a few areas are still more or less unexplored
and ready to be researched.
15
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